Now Winner of the Booker Prize 2023 in an overall rather disappointing year Take current public debates centering on the rise of right-wing authoritarNow Winner of the Booker Prize 2023 in an overall rather disappointing year Take current public debates centering on the rise of right-wing authoritarianism through elections in Europe, project the worst case into the future and, voilà, this is the result. It's certainly a worthwhile political dystopia, but surprising, innovative or unusual it is not, it's more like a mixture of 1984 and It Can't Happen Here, but make it Irish.
Our protagonist is microbiologist Eilish Stack whose husband Larry, a trade unionist, is abducted by the secret police of the new authoritarian Ireland, leaving Eilish to care for the four children and her father who is suffering from dementia. The family, perceived as traitors as Larry was organizing workers and was thus opposing authority, comes under increasing duress, topics like the loss of objective reality and truth are discussed (after all, Eilish is a scientist), and the aging father works like an oracle, constantly speaking from the depths of his slipping mind but knowing that Eilish should never underestimate the ruthlessness of people and thus the system they have built. The children show different reactions to their loss of freedom, and have to face different consequences.
To me, the most interesting aspect was how Eilish struggles to be just in this impossible situation: She wants to stand up to the system and demand her husband back - but will that kill him, if he isn't already dead? Also, is she a bad mother if she fights political injustice, as she puts her children in danger? Should she flee and maybe save her children, but leave her severely ill father alone, a man who is already threatened by the state?
The language and style of this novel was much praised, alas, I cannot find the specific beauty in these run-on sentences, these deserts of text (as we say in German when the pages are crammed with letters). I see that there's a punchy rhythm going on, a bleakness that fits the narrative, but it didn't really reach me.
So while "Prophet Song" certainly has some things going on for it, it does seem a little conventional for me.
Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2023 Listen, I just can't with this Booker longlist: Sure, this is a decent historical novel based on real events, but Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2023 Listen, I just can't with this Booker longlist: Sure, this is a decent historical novel based on real events, but it's far, far removed from any aesthetic decision that would indicate that postmodernism ever happened and from any plot points that are of heightened relevance for the social and political climate we live in today. This wouldn't bother me so much if the whole list wasn't such a mess, I guess, but alas, I'm annoyed.
The book revolves around the real W. Somerset Maugham who in the early 1920's travels to the Straits Settlement of Penang (today part of Malaysia) with his lover Gerald Haxton. He made bad decisions at the stock market and finds himself almost broke, plus he contemplates divorcing his wife back home - which means he is in desperate need of money. Enter Lesley Hamlyn, the wife of Maugham's good friend Robert. The chatty woman is the second main character, inspiring the famous author to craft new texts based on her stories, among them the play The Letter about the Ethel Proudlock case (Proudlock shot and killed a man in the colonies, she was sentenced to death and later pardoned), contained in Maugham's collection The Casuarina Tree set in the Federated Malay States.
There is love and intrigue with an exotic (I know, I know) back drop, there is some commentary on queerness as well as colonialism with its bored and useless settlers, plus there is a plotline featuring Sun Yat-sen, a (real) Chinese statesman. Ergo: There are a lot of people and ideas thrown into the mix, plotlines intersect, there are time jumps etc., but somehow the language remains slow and portly like a day in the extreme heat of the places depicted.
This is well done and all, but where is the edge? Where is the surprise? Where is the punch? This fits into the classic canon that British authors have established when writing about the colonies, and in that respect, the novel sometimes comes across as a pastiche. Another entry that remains just too prim and proper for my taste....more
Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2023 Listen, I get VERY skeptical when a text is compared to Kafka's work, because in my not-so-humble opinion, FranzShortlisted for the Booker Prize 2023 Listen, I get VERY skeptical when a text is compared to Kafka's work, because in my not-so-humble opinion, Franz Fucking Kafka is the best German-language author who has ever graced the world with his ideas, thank you very much (yes, you heard that right, Wolle Goethe). But while Bernstein of course cannot touch the master for whom an eternal light is shining in the cathedral of my heart, I understand why people see a connection between the Canadian poet and Franzel the Great: Bernstein finds abysmally dark and haunting images to illustrate the absurd nature of humankind, and her protagonist is so psychologically deformed by what has been written into her, so the character she has developed under internal and external pressure, that the almost non-existent plot still reads like a horror story about a woman whose brain has been poisoned by internalized cruelty.
Our narrator and protagonist, an unnamed Jewish woman, has learnt all her life that her worth is measured by the title-giving obedience, that she as a woman is a projection surface and tool for the comfort of others. Now, as an adult, she moves to live with her recently divorced brother, who resides in an unnamed country that was involved in the Holocaust (it's probably Romania, because we do have the mythical sheepdog, but it's a Carpathian one). The family used to live at the place before the terrible events that are never specified happened, and now the protagonist is ostracized by a society whose language she doesn't speak, no matter her roots. When the brother comes back from traveling, he falls ill...
This novella heavily relies on atmosphere, partly to its detriment, because it tends to be very descriptive and to meander off into different directions. What I applaud though is that this text is daring, not only in its scenes, but also when it comes to the language: To me, it felt like a translated text, like the rhythm the words develop is not that of English - and I mean that as a compliment, because the effect isn't that of clumsiness, but of alienation, of looking through a lense, and this underlines the message, namely that we encounter a narrator that struggles with internalized hate and sees the world through a specific veil, often tending to accept cruelty because there is no energy, no self-love left to resist: She does not "live in her life". She has disappeared, been murdered from the inside, struck by "permanent although latent terror".
Bernstein also delivers some brutal lines with immense power. Take this one sentence horror story, for example: "I recalled my own aborted attempts at intimacy, with men, with women, and all that I had ever come away with was a sense of my essential interchangeability." - welcome to the pits of hell. Or this one, reminding me of my favorite Kafka story, In the Penal Colony: "I was caught in the machinery of certain manias and maladies, the engines of their compulsory performace urging me on." - wow, just wow.
Still, I was overall bothered by the author's tendency to meander and the long descriptive passages, which throw off the pacing. I'm happy this one got nominated though, because it has drive and unusual ideas, two things that most of this Booker longlist have been tragically lacking.
Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2023 Listen, two stars is maybe a little harsh, but this is the type of tame literature that doesn't hurt no one: It unLonglisted for the Booker Prize 2023 Listen, two stars is maybe a little harsh, but this is the type of tame literature that doesn't hurt no one: It unfolds exactly as to be expected, the characters are well-known clichés, and readers can nod their heads and feel like they are on the right side of things as they bemoan the social ills depicted here without any nuance and without elements that counter-act or disturb basic convictions. It's convenient literature, intellectually lazy, drawn out, aesthetically conservative. God knows why this gets a Booker nod.
The plot follows two families: Wúràolá is a doctor, but thanks to patriarchy, she is also expected to be an obedient wife and mother - she marries an old family friend who abuses her. In the second narrative strand, 16-year-old Eniolá has to beg in the streets in order to pay his school fees after his father loses his job, which in the long run makes him vulnerable to become complicit in the very structures that work to his detriment, because he has to survive. Of course, the ways if these two characters cross.
So we have two people striving for an education, a man and a woman, one wealthy, one poor, and these societal and familial positions are juxtaposed plus the connections are shown, especially in the political realm: Wúràolá's father-in-law runs for governorship, and Eniolá also gets caught up in politics. The novel clearly tells us what to think about the situations presented, which is pretty annoying, as the moral is so obvious in the plot itself. Actually, it would be more fun if this was crafted as outrage literature, but for that, it would have to be more angry, more, well, outrageous, unruly, powerful. All that it is not.
This is a novel that sticks to the well known rules of conventional storytelling while criticizing the unjust rules of Nigerian society. I wish the book would take more risks and go for a harder impact to bring its (very worthwile!) points across....more
Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2023 Okay, so let's celebrate our tolerance for ambiguity: This ambitious sci-fi story is a possible Booker winner, it'Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2023 Okay, so let's celebrate our tolerance for ambiguity: This ambitious sci-fi story is a possible Booker winner, it's very well crafted - and I didn't enjoy it one bit. I applaud MacInnes for writing an eco novel that shows how human beings are part of a larger, mysterious, and beautiful natural system, it's one of the few Booker entries that at least somehow relate to current political issues. In the world depicted, climate change has accelerated. Enter our protagonist, marine biologist Leigh: Growing up in Rotterdam with a violent father who despaired over his job keeping the rising tides at bay, adult Leigh first joins a mission that researches a vent apparently three times deeper than the Mariana Trench - Leigh specializes in the research of unicellar algae, one of the oldest sources of life. Then, Leigh is recruited to join a secret space mission that aims to find out about mysterious irregularities - the algae are supposed to provide food and be part of the intended research.
So yes, you need to have a propensity for slow-moving, description-heavy, 500 page tomes that dive into the intricacies of marine biology and space travel and extrapolate the status quo to possible future developments in these fields. I really tried, but the fact that I didn't care about any of the characters (especially the space crew hardly gets any proper character development) made it even harder to plough through page after page of elegiac evocations of scenes and atmosphere. It's not that it's badly done, in fact MacInnes achieves exactly what he aims to do, it's just that this kind of writing does nothing for me: Endless mundane occurrences on ships and in space, intricate, lengthy scene-setting, conversations about the how's and why's of detailed scientific endeavors... that's a no from me.
We have recurring motifs like immersion, distance, and connection, we have light and darkness, the unreliable human apparatus for perception and understanding, it's very well thought out. I also liked the constant idea that in nature, time exists horizontally, so the beginning of life is still happening in various senses. The title of the novel alone underlines the author's cleverness: Leigh ascends from diving, she ascends to the sky, there's an idea of religious/spiritual wonder, and the spacecraft is supposed to come down on Ascension Island. In the final part, we hear the perspective of Leigh's sister Helena (IMHO, the most interesting character, so needless to say she hardly features) who questions natural scientist Leigh on many levels.
But I was bored out of my mind: The broad descriptions and the slow pacing, the even temperament of the whole text just drove me nuts. So all in all, I'm not surprised (and not even mad) if this wins the Booker, but I can't get behind this novel, purely for reasons of subjective taste....more
Now Shortlisted for the Dublin Literary Award 2024 Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2023 This debut novel is composed of interconnected short stories, sNow Shortlisted for the Dublin Literary Award 2024 Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2023 This debut novel is composed of interconnected short stories, so it suffers from the typical curse of having some very strong entries, but also some mediocre ones. Nevertheless, this book finally brings some drive, some real punch into the list: Escoffery is not here to play or to offer some polite entertainment to be consumed in a curduroy jacket with a glass of red wine, no, this slaps (and I see why Marlon James, a bona fide make-it-slap-expert, endorses it) - it's one of these books that make you want to have a beer with the author, because his voice on the page sounds like he's a great guy. The text depicts the experiences of an immigrant family from Jamaica that now resides in Miami, with the members (mainly son Trelawney, the only one who was already born in America) trying to find their identities and place in the States. The perspectives and foci change, but the haunting question remains: What are you?
Not only does Escoffery breezily pull of a second-person narration, he also crafts believable dialogue and expertly dives into the psychologies of the characters, especially when he writes about darker subject matters, like the dubious father of Trelawney's cousin or the white woman who pays to be slapped in the face (Jesus, I'd LOVE to have more disturbing stuff on this damn list). When Trelawney is called "defective" by his own father, he ruins his old man's beloved tree, gets thrown out and has to live out of his car; his storyline is interspersed with other destinies and experiences, that all ponder identity in a melting pot.
The book is strongest when Escoffery balances fast pacing and psychological depth, but sometimes, the episodes go off the rails, missing their own beat, sacrificing the economic narration for more sprawling parts that don't quite come together. Still, a very promising debut from a smart, gifted author.
Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2023 Finally: Someone trying something daring and different on this longlist! Feeney tells the story of Jamie, a neurodLonglisted for the Booker Prize 2023 Finally: Someone trying something daring and different on this longlist! Feeney tells the story of Jamie, a neurodivergent kid on the brink of puberty, who dreams of getting to know his dead mother by building an intricate machine that allows him to connect with her. Putting aside the downright absurd focus the list puts on dead parents (because who needs political fiction in times like these?), I truly enjoyed how this particular Irish gem weaves a web of poetic references that, while not bringing back the dead, connects the living: Jamie's mother died in childbirth; he befriends fatherless Terry at school; there's fatherless Tadhg, the woodwork teacher from the islands with a dark family secret; and Tess, a motherless teacher who experiences the breakdown of her marriage, the loss of her father to alcohol addiction and the horrors of an IVF treatment. All of these characters, much like Jamie's father, who always stands up for his son, defy the standards of propriety headmaster Father Faulks sets for his school, and at the heart of book lies the question of how much a person should bend to outside standards...
...which is where the wooden boat comes in: Jamie dreams of building a perpetual motion machine, a machine that stops the chaos of destiny, "a machine for before the falling apart" which, by the standards of physics, is of course impossible - but he believes the energy of it might cross time and space to his mom. Woodwork teacher Tadhg has an idea how Jamie could fulfill his ambition in a feasible manner: He, Tess, Terry and some other students and friends want to help Jamie to build a Currach, a traditional Irish boat, which is made of wood, so a living and moving material that is bent to the vessel's shape (but not too much, or it breaks!), and floats on water, a moving element that relates to Jamie's mother who was a talented swimmer. As Tadhg explains, Currachs are always in motion, "vulnerable, but powerful", boats built by ordinary people - and sure, that's a metaphor, and it works. Even the steps in the building process relate to the characters' experiences.
The point of view moves smoothly, mainly between Jamie with his perceptions that seem to convey that he is on the autism spectrum, and Tess as well as Tadhg, who develop a tender relationship. Motifs like the color red, water, boats, family, as well as the options fight vs. flight are modulated in varying situations, and the developing bonds between the different types of outsiders gradually start to remind readers of the magical bonds of friendship as displayed in the children's books of Astrid Lindgren - still, this novel is clearly aimed at adults, also pondering questions of sexual longing, the protection of children and growing up with familial trauma.
This novel drew me in and kept my interest throughout, it made me root for the characters and ponder their backstories and motivations. I particularly enjoyed Tess' story line (which references The Edible Woman) that depicts the mechanisms of her marriage and the expectations she faces - and despises. I also like me a well thought out structure that is build intentionally and stringently, which Feeney delivers.
This might not be a perfect novel, but it's ambitious, inventive, well composed, and captivating - which is quite a lot. It also screams for a movie adaptation....more
Now Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2023 Now Nominated for the National Book Award for Fiction 2023
This is not a bad book, but I don't see how a novelNow Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2023 Now Nominated for the National Book Award for Fiction 2023
This is not a bad book, but I don't see how a novel told that conventionally and offering almost no ambiguity can possibly be the best English-language fiction of 2023. The plot is based on the historically true destiny of the inhabitants of Malaga Island (in the text: Apple Island) in Maine: They lived as an integrated interracial community until 1911, when they were forcibly evicted by the state and had to live in a segregated America. Harding introduces us to a whole cast of (fictional) islanders, many of them descendants of the first settlers, a runaway slave named Benjamin Honey and his Irish wife who came in 1792. Then, the state representatives, proponents of eugenics, enter the picture and the tragedy begins...
The strong suit of the text is Harding's ability to gracefully and empathically depict the destitute people on the island who live in a strong community, but far from any comfort, healthcare and with almost no access to information on the outside world. The most interesting character is a former missionary though who came to educate the children and spread Christian morals on Apple Island, and while he tries to save Ethan Honey, a gifted young painter, he largely stands by when the other Islanders are deported from their homes, prompting the question what he should have done, and in how far he was a messenger of white supremacy. The government officials cite scientific reasons (namely eugenics, like, you know, the Nazis) to displace locals and steal their property, as well as to forcefully sterilize, socially ostracize, and generally humiliate them.
It's true that Harding's language is lyrical: This is a prose that ventures into the bombastic image, the adjective-heavy evocation of atmosphere, the visceral appeal to the senses. Perspectives change, time collapses, and all of this is expertly done, alas, experimental or particularly contemporary this is not. It's the kind of prose that could have been written exactly like that 50 or even 100 years ago. It's very controlled and thought out, there is nothing particularly daring or innovative to see here. And again: That's not necessarily bad, but how many "Oprah's Book Club" vibes do you want on a Booker list?
Another aspect that got me thinking were the thoughts of the wonderful Danez Smith, who remarked that the Black/mixed characters are shown as people to whom things happen, who don't have lots of agency. They come up with the explanation that living in an Eden-like place demands a degree of ignorance, but I would argue that Apple Island was never a pure Eden in the first place: Yes, the people live in a (for the time) progressive interracial community, but they also live in dire poverty, and as outcasts - they have paid an unfair, cruel price from the get-go. The nuances are not explored deeply enough in the novel though, the text does, as Danez suggests, sometimes remain a little simplistic (read Danez' piece for the NYT here).
So all in all, this is solid storytelling, but it did not surprise me on the aesthetic level, and it did not challenge me content-wise. It's a conventional historical novel and well done as such, but riveting this is not....more
Now Unsurprisingly Nominated for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2024 Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2023 It's always a dangerous game when the Booker Now Unsurprisingly Nominated for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2024 Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2023 It's always a dangerous game when the Booker dismisses all strong contenders and instead presents a list composed of left-field entries, especially when they add young, promising authors who are not quite at the Booker level yet, but will then inadvertently be judged by Booker standards - to their own detriment. "Western Lane" is a decent book, but Booker material this is not (unlike The New Life, Chain-Gang All-Stars, Biography of X and all the other literary hits that went without a nod). Maroo tells the story of 11-year-old Gopi, whose mother has recently died. Now her father is alone, trying to take care of his three daugthers and pondering whether Gopi, the youngest, should go live with his childless brother and his wife instead.
Apart from the topic of grief, which is subtly rendered in Gopi's precise and often seemingly mundane observations, we learn about the bond between father and daughter through sport, in this case squash, which he wants the kids to take up in order to keep them occupied: While her sisters are not particularly dedicated or interested, Gopi and her dad do not only communicate through squash, spending time together on the court, their movement and alertness during the game is also connected to present physicality as opposed to the ephemeral process of grieving.
As Gopi develops a crush on Ged, the talented 13-year-old son of an employee at the title-giving sports establishment Western Lane just outside London, the element of race enters the narrative, because Gopi is British-Indian and her relationship to the white boy is seemingly deemed problematic by some, just like the the friendship her father strikes with Ged's mother. The migration background also plays a role when Gopi ponders the language barrier between her late mother and the siblings, as English was not her first language, but Gujarati. Silence is a major theme throughout the book, as are cultural differences and how Gopi's generation can deal with them.
So all in all, this quiet, shortish text offers many good ideas and is an interesting investigation into the nature of grief, but it is oh-so-slow and the set-up is very transparent and thus not particularly elegant, and sometimes even formulaic. I'm afraid this story is overall a little forgettable, but I feel like Maroo is very talented and could soon come up with a banger - this ain't it though, and the judges didn't do her any favors by nominating her now.
Also, I hate squash. On to the next.
EDIT: Of course this got nominated for the Women's Prize, a prize that generally celebrates highly accessible literature that is not big on ambivalence on the plot level or experimental designs on the aesthetic level. ...more
Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2023 While I'm starting to get a hunch that this is an overall tragically a-political longlist with a weird focus on gLonglisted for the Booker Prize 2023 While I'm starting to get a hunch that this is an overall tragically a-political longlist with a weird focus on grief, dead mothers and child protagonists, I also have to say that highlighting this gem by nominating it is well justified: In the novel, narrator Marianne tells her life story, from losing her mother at only 8 years old to becoming a mother herself. The book is a variation on the medieval poem "Pearl", in which the lyrical I grieves the loss of his precious white pearl, apparently symbolizing his daughter (or wife?), and dreams of a river, deeming the far side of the bank to be paradise: He sees a girl there wearing a dress full of white pearls and, believing her to be his pearl, aims to cross the river - then wakes up.
In Hughes' (a Welsh poet) debut novel, we have a grieving child whose mother left the family home after giving birth to her younger brother and disappeared, her footprints lastly being found at the river bank nearby. The story slowly reveals what pearl the mother might have been looking for, and what prompted her behavior. Hughes does an excellent job rendering the nature of grief not only in adjectives, but in strong imagery and whole plot points employed to illustrate Marianne's emotions as a child (extra credit for the great haunted house scenes, loved it). While to work with medieval poetry can easily aquire a pretentious vibe, the metaphors are affecting and effective, even the really over-used river to the afterlife gets a pass from me. Jesus, all the chapters start with folk rhymes, which I would 100% hate when done by a lesser talent than Hughes.
The strong sense of place is inspired by the author's own surroundings in Cheshire, and the stories of both the mother and Marianne as well as the experiences they share are rooted in the experiences of the author and her own mother - the result feels precise and authentic, but still refrains from the confessional feel that a lot of recent literature displays. While grown up Marianne studies art and remixes "Pearl" in her work, the author did her PhD in Creative Writing while trying to transpose the medieval poem (you can learn more about the writing process from Siân Hughes herself here, but watch out: major spoilers).
Good choice, Booker judges (I still feel like the composition of the list as a whole is bonkers)....more
Now Shortlisted for the Dublin Literary Award 2024 Nominated for the Booker Prize 2023 Barry is just a master of empathetic, intense prose that illuminaNow Shortlisted for the Dublin Literary Award 2024 Nominated for the Booker Prize 2023 Barry is just a master of empathetic, intense prose that illuminates the movements of human consciousness - but this is also a moral investigation into the crimes of the Catholic church in Ireland, and how the consequences of child abuse permeate individual lives and the destiny of families and communities. While told in the third person, the text is strongest when it turns into a maelstrom of consciousness and takes readers inside the mind of retired police officer Tom Kettle who, as his last name suggests, had found warmth and solace in his home, his family. But from the beginning, we learn that he suffers because his wife and kids have all died within the last ten years. When young policemen visit Tom about a cold case involving the murder of a clergyman who was accused of pedophilia as well as another priest who evaded imprisonment, we start to wonder what Tom knows about the case, and what happened to his loved ones.
The narration is highly complex, jumping between memory and present-day reality, showing a man struggling to revive long-buried trauma in order to know himself. Nine moths Tom has been retired, and the time has birthed a breakthrough of his inner turmoil. Both he and his beloved wife grew up in the care of the church, both were abused. In a way, Tom is an Irish noir detective, and Barry serves us typical elements of a crime novel - questionings, evidence gathering, theories -, but rooted in the psychological investigation of his protagonist's past.
The hallucinatory quality heightens the sense of entrapment that renders the whole text gloomy and claustrophobic. Tom is existentially lonely, his pain is overpowering, and to sort out his trauma-stricken, huddled memory seems like the only path to salvation: From the Catholic institution, Tom escaped into the military, was sent to war, joined the police, and tried to make a home for himself with his equally damaged wife whom he loved dearly - all while experiencing how even the police has continued to protect abusers in the clergy. Barry's lyrical prose shines once more, and his unreliable protagonist - unreliable even to himself - remains an enigma, as we all are, but a captivating one.
And then there's Tom's neighbor, an actress named, of course, Ms McNulty, who has fled her husband who used to abuse her now deceased daughter - who are this woman and her son? Not only do they relate to Barry's McNulty family that appears in several of his works, they also relate to the hauntings of the past, the ghosts that have followed Tom since his childhood in the orphanage.
I'm not sure how Barry manages to write such moving novels that are also this complex and never kitsch-y. Just nominate him for the Booker again, he deserves it....more
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